"Her Skin Returning" by Laura Smith

Moving against, an engine into grain or ground, a sign sawing around the outside of thought like talk, like chaff or shell, as if the language were something to leave behind.

Left behind, longest trip, last night in the last city on earth or last summer, where we stayed and left a poor story in between the bed and the wall. In the space where memory grows.

In the last light the flicker said the slippest wind and narrative was built for such as these. Slight winds in slight rooms. Slight words, slight winds, the slight space where time grows smaller and blown bone through.

Time in the space between the bed and the wall expands, the room grown smaller. Where I found you is not where I think of you found. This has very little to do with language. Just another thing that occurs in time, like rooms, like moving, like stretching into spaces that with memory and time grow larger. Like her skin, returning, well-traveled, at dawn.

Laura will be reading her work at WORMS on January 24.